by Sidney Hart and Rachael L. Penman
(Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press/Rowman & Littlefield, 2012)
hardcover, 9 x 11 in.; 284 pp., $50.00


1812: A Nation Emerges accompanies the exhibition of the same name and features 114 color images, an introduction by one of the exhibition’s curators, and two essays by leading historians. Marking the two-hundredth anniversary of the conflict, this book explores how the United States was transformed and unified by the individuals who took part in that seminal event. It also provides an overview of the battles, the negotiations for peace, the aftermath—known as “the era of good feelings”—and the great commercial, industrial, and cultural expansion that followed, transforming the United States into a world power.

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or from Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press





Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories

by Wanda M. Corn and Tirza True Latimer
(University of California Press, 2011)
hardcover, 9 x 11 in.; 404 pp., $45.00



Gertrude Stein is justly famous for her modernist writings and her patronage of avant-garde painters (most notably Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso) in Paris before World War I. Seeing Gertrude Stein illuminates less familiar aspects of her life. Wanda M. Corn and Tirza True Latimer analyze the portraits for which Stein posed, the domestic settings she created with Alice B. Toklas, her partner, and the signature styles of dress the two women adopted. Lavishly illustrated with images in a range of media, this pathbreaking study shows Stein’s life on a human scale while tracing her influence on a wide variety of artists of her own and subsequent generations.

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or from University of California Press





Capital Portraits: Treasures from Washington Private Collections

by Carolyn Kinder Carr and Ellen G. Miles
(Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2011), hardcover, 8 x 10 in.; 198 pp., $49.95


Capital Portraits presents little-known artworks from important Washington-area private collections. These portraits by major artists date from the mid-eighteenth century to the present and speak to the many compelling ways that paintings and sculpture capture human likenesses and personalities. Collected, commissioned, or inherited, many of these works have seldom, if ever, been seen in a public setting. The catalogue, which accompanies an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from April 8 through September 5, 2011, illustrates the portraits and recounts their histories, including comments by living sitters about having their portraits made.

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or from Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press.





Calder's Portraits: A New Language

by Barbara Zabel
(Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2011), hardcover, 9 x 11 in.; 164 pp., $49.95


Celebrated for mobiles and stabiles that enliven city squares and museums around the world, Alexander Calder (1898–1976) is not widely recognized as a portrait artist. Throughout his career, however, Calder created portraits of a wide variety of subjects—himself and family members, entertainment figures (Josephine Baker and Jimmy Durante), sports stars (Babe Ruth and Helen Wills Moody), and artists (including Fernand Léger and Saul Steinberg). Calder’s Portraits examines how the artist negotiated his relationships the people he drew and painted, and how he continually defined and redefined himself through his art.

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or from Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press.





Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture

by Jonathan D. Katz and David C. Ward Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, in association with the National Portrait Gallery, 2010 296 pp. 9 ½ x 11 ¼ in

Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, companion volume to an exhibition of the same name at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, traces the defining presence of same-sex desire in American portraiture through a seductive selection of more than 150 full-color illustrations, drawings, and portraits from leading American artists. Arcing from the turn of the twentieth century, through the emergence of the modern gay liberation movement in 1969, the tragedies of the AIDS epidemic, and to the present, Hide/Seek openly considers what has long been suppressed or tacitly ignored, even by the most progressive sectors of our society: the influence of gay and lesbian artists in creating American modernism.

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or from Amazon.com





The Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, 2009

with an essay by Trevor Fairbrother and catalogue entries by Brandon Brame Fortune and Lauren Johnson (distributed by the University of Washington Press, 2009), softcover, 5 x 8 ½ in.; 80 pp., $19.95

For the National Portrait Gallery’s most recent portrait competition, held triennially, a jury chose the forty-nine works featured in this book from more than 3,300 entries in a variety of media. The finalists used portraiture or self-portraiture to explore issues of identity and test the boundaries of figurative art. Grand-prize winner Dave Woody received a $25,000 award for his photograph Laura; he will also be commissioned to create a portrait of a notable living American for NPG's collection.

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Faces of the Frontier
Photographic Portraits from the American West, 1845-1924

by Frank H. Goodyear III, with an essay by Richard White (University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), hardcover, 9 x 12 in.; 182 pp., $45.00

Faces of the Frontier showcases more than 120 photographic portraits of leaders, statesmen, soldiers, laborers, activists, criminals, and others, all posed before the cameras that made their way to nearly every mining shantytown and frontier outpost on the prairie. Drawing primarily on the National Portrait Gallery’s collection, this book depicts many of the people who helped transform the West between the end of the Mexican War and passage of the Indian Citizenship Act.

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Swift to My Wounded
Walt Whitman and the Civil War

written and adapted by E. Warren Perry Jr. (National Portrait Gallery, 2009), softcover, 5 ¼ x 8 ¼ in.; 38 pp., $6.99

Swift to My Wounded was first performed on November 13, 2006, for the National Portrait Gallery’s Cultures in Motion Program, in collaboration with the Catholic University of America Drama Department. Playwright E. Warren Perry Jr. uses Walt Whitman’s writings and his own adaptation of Whitman’s writings to convey the drama of the Civil War in Washington, D.C. Whitman served as a nurse in the Old Patent Office, used as a hospital during the war and now the Portrait Gallery’s home.

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Reflections/Refractions
Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century

edited by Wendy Wick Reaves (Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press/Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), hardcover,
9 ¼ x 12 in.; 190 pp., $49.95

In Reflections/Refractions, some of the greatest modern artists use self-portraiture to trace the intricacies of their personalities or artistic personas. The book is at once a catalog of twentieth-century self-portraits in the Portrait Gallery’s collection and an exploration of how modern artists view themselves and the world.

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Inventing Marcel Duchamp:
The Dynamics of Portraiture

edited by Anne Collins Goodyear and James W. McManus (distributed by MIT Press, 2009), hardcover, 9 x 12 in.; 320 pp., $49.95

One of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) was a master of self-invention who carefully regulated the image he projected through self-portraiture and through his collaboration with those who portrayed him.

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Ballyhoo: Posters as Portraiture

by Wendy Wick Reaves (distributed by University of Washington Press, 2008), softcover, 9 x 6 ½ in.; 160 pp., $19.95

Ballyhoo! looks at the poster as a form of popular portraiture. By interweaving the three themes of poster art, celebrity promotion, and advertising, Ballyhoo! suggests how a famous face can enhance the message of the poster and, conversely, how posters have defined and disseminated images of prominent Americans.

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Zaida Ben-Yusuf: New York Portrait Photographer

by Frank H. Goodyear III (Merrell, 2008), hardcover,
11 ¼ x 8 ½ in.; 240 pp., $59.95

In the early twentieth century Zaida Ben-Yusuf (1869–1933) was one of the busiest photographers in New York City, maintaining a fashionable studio on Fifth Avenue, exhibiting her distinctly modern portraits across America, Europe, and Russia, and publishing work in many magazines. Her self-portraits also challenged traditional perceptions of female identity. This striking book celebrates Ben-Yusuf ’s achievement, showcasing a significant selection of her elegant and compelling portraits.

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RECOGNIZE!
Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture

by Brandon Brame Fortune, Frank H. Goodyear III, and Jobyl A. Boone (National Portrait Gallery, 2008), softcover, 11 x 8 ½ in.; 32 pp., $10.00

Images of hip hop performers are as pervasive in our culture as the music itself. This full-color booklet highlights the six artists and one poet—Kehinde Wiley, David Scheinbaum, Jefferson Pinder, Tim Conlon, Dave Hupp, Shinique Smith, and Nikki Giovanni—who appear in the exhibition and captures the vibrancy and energy that characterizes hip hop.

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